Transit of Venus Blog

Kerguelen photographs not from Kerguelen

NewsPosted by Steven van Roode Oct 21, 2007 11:35AM
The Smithonian Insitituation Libraries’ exhibition Chasing Venus, Observing the transits of Venus, 1639–2004 has two photographs showing members of the party and the wooden observatory huts of the American station on Kerguelen Island. At least, that’s what the captions tell us. Comparing with pictures on Chuck Bueter’s website however, I came to the conclusion that these two pictures don’t show us the station on Kerguelen Island, but the station on Chatham Island instead.
The image above from Chuck's website is showing the photographic house. The word ‘Chatham’ is clearly visible on the rear panel. On the far right of this picture the transit house is visible. Notice how the higher end of the transit house, with a window, is facing the photographic house. The station on Chatham Island was the only station where the transit house was erected in this way. All other stations had their transit houses built the other way around, as it was intended. Now look at the following picture from the Chasing Venus exhibition. There’s a window visible, indicating that this picture is actually taken from Chatham Island. On Chuck’s website there are more pictures to compare with.

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John Winthrop commemorated in St John's

NewsPosted by Steven van Roode Sep 22, 2007 07:29AM

To start this blog some old news about the transit of Venus. In the summer of 2004 a plaque was presented by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in St John’s, New Foundland to commemorate the observation of the transit by John Winthrop in 1761. The plaque was to be installed on an armillary sphere on the campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland. However, in Spring 2007 the plaque still wasn’t on the armillary sphere. What happened? I contacted Fred Smith, who told me that “because of administrative confusion our Facilities Management Department had mounted the plaque inside a building near the armillary.” Happily, some weeks later the plaque was mounted on its proper place, the armillary sphere opposite the Henrietta Harvey Building on St. John’s campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Image of the plaque

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